


let not light see

by vlieger



Series: old footie fic rewrites [2]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:44:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1714388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vlieger/pseuds/vlieger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iker is drunk when David tells him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let not light see

**Author's Note:**

> super pretentious madrid-era iker/becks i wrote years ago and cleaned up recently. because why not.

Iker is drunk when David tells him. He's coming home from a night out, stumbling through the door just as the phone stops ringing shrilly and clicks over to the answering machine.

"Iker? I guess you're not there-- I'll call back later."

A beat. Iker stands still in his dark living room, keys resting idle in his palm.

"I-- I'm leaving."

The line clicks, the machine beeps, and--

"I know," Iker tells the empty house.

 

His first summer in Madrid, Iker took David out for dinner. 

The heat hung in the air like smoke, and Iker couldn't keep his eyes off the way David moved through it, the flashes of his hips as his t-shirt caught on the waistband of his jeans.

He liked it, selfishly, stealing David away like this-- he was like a teenager in Iker's company and the anonymity of the post-siesta lull, in the city that didn't care quite so much about him as the one he came from. He looked relaxed, _real_ , and Iker thought how strange it was that this: this selfishness, David's own temporary disregard for the world around him, was better at making David into what he tried so hard to be than anything (everything) he could selflessly give to it. 

Iker took them to a tiny cafe slotted between expensive restaurants: adorned with ivy, bare walls and scrubbed wooden tables, somehow unpretentiously so.

David chose the wine, a cheap red.

Iker frowned, because it was easy to let David have something he didn't even know to ask for-- the afternoon, the food, Iker-- but he couldn't let him get away with something so obvious. Give him a second to think about it and he'd break your heart, the bastard, without even knowing. "You're trying too hard again," he said. "Red is a winter wine."

David just smiled, rolling his eyes. "And you're a pretentious arsehole," he said. "Drink it."

Iker did. It tasted like shit.

"It's not that bad," said David.

"It really is," said Iker. "But you're English."

"Classy as fuck, mate," said David, saluting with his glass.

The waiter came to take their orders. Iker ordered Paella, and David spent ages looking at the menu before he closed it with a bright smile and asked for the same.

Their meals came at the same time, and they ate in silence; David watched the people eating around them, the street outside the window, with bright eyes. Iker watched David.

He leaned back in his seat, when they were finished, and looked on through hooded eyes as David took Iker's plate, placed it atop his own and paralleled their forks.

"So tell me, David fucking Beckham," Iker said. "Football's poster boy, England's hero, saviour of Real Madrid. Goldenballs. Why do you care?" He smirked condescendingly.

He'd hated David on principle the first time they met. David was so British and Iker still hated that: British wine and British food and British footballers and the British media and Britain's David Beckham. The oh so civilised efficient Englishman come to save the lazy Spaniards. Flaunting their mass of royals-- real and made-up, Iker had heard about Beckingham Palace, _madre de dios_ \-- like they'd flaunted their land mass, once upon a time. Fucking _extranjero_. British people were very stupid and very self-congratulatory, Iker had always thought, and the first time he saw David, drunkenly rearranging coats in the cloakroom, colour first then size, while his wife made friends with B-grade Spanish celebrities at the party outside, it'd felt like a kick to the gut.

"I don't," David lied.

He reached across the table and laid his hand over Iker's, looked at him through his lashes.

They hadn't kissed yet. Hadn't even fucked.

They worked steadily on the bottle sitting between them and talked about football.

It was easy to forget that David was a footballer, which sounded stupid but actually wasn't.

Something about the hair and the crooked teeth in his smile.

He stretched his foot out under the table as he talked to Iker about attacking formations, and hooked it under Iker's ankle, pressing their calves together. Iker thought about saying, _I'm not your wife_ , but it wasn't like David didn't know that, so he swallowed it down.

David cut across Iker while Iker was busy giving him more reasons the Premier League was shit, and said, "I ran away once. Did I tell you about that? Yeah, when I was seven. I wasn't allowed to go play footie with my mates, 'cause it was getting dark and no one could come keep an eye on me. So I got my backpack, packed two pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, my boots and my ball-- couldn't take anything else after that 'cause the ball took up all the room. Stole some biscuits from the kitchen on my way out and put them in my pocket, and then I was off. My parents realised I was gone about two hours later, and by that time I'd already fallen asleep. They found me at the footie pitch. First place they looked."

Iker stared at him. Then he said, "I was saying, the Premier League is shit."

David laughed. "Sure thing, mate," he said in his most crass English. "Got me somewhere, innit?"

"It got you something," agreed Iker.

They walked back to Iker's place, and David stood close behind as Iker unlocked the door, slinging both arms over his shoulders. His wrists were pale, like the underside of a leaf.

"You can fuck me now, if you want," said Iker.

David's breath hitched.

They fucked on the couch. It was too small for both of them; Iker kept one foot on the floor, hips tilted up so David could get between them, get the angle, and he ran his hands over David's muscles, his tattoos, his stubble. He didn't feel like a pretty boy under Iker's palms.

David leaned in close; Iker thought he was going for a kiss until David bit his earlobe and whispered, "You want to know why?" and punctuated his thrusts with, "I don't. Know. How. To do. Anything. Else."

 

Iker doesn't call him back.

David goes to his house and he isn't home; he sits quietly on the step and waits.

He's wearing a D&G t-shirt and he has an old toothbrush in his pocket. 

What he wants to say is:

Belonging isn't so easy anymore. It is when you're a kid from London and all you are is football. It is when you make the first team and when you get called up to play for your country. It is when you meet a beautiful woman who looks like a doll, bones like wings, and you have the same accent and you hold hands when you say your vows.

But then you get more famous for being famous than playing football, and suddenly it isn't so easy. It isn't so easy when part of you is grey skies and part of you is sunny and yet another part is empty and waiting to be filled. When touching and moving and aligning suddenly become more important than people, and in the shadow of your hands you see everything that isn't under your control, and the more you look at it the more it spirals beyond your reach. When you don't even know what nationality your children are anymore. When you've given a little here, a little there, again and again, in the hope that if you give enough then surely you'll belong, somewhere. And then the only way you can hold it all together is with a smile, and you're not really sure about anything anymore so you smile all the time, just to be on the safe side.

What he wants to say is:

And I think what this all means is: I don't know. But I already told you that, didn't I?

What he does say is:

"Vicks found your toothbrush from that time she was away and you stayed over."

Iker looks at him like he's a moron and says, "It's a fucking toothbrush, I don't want it back."

David puts it in his bathroom anyway, and then Iker fucks him from behind up against the vanity, meeting David's eyes in the mirror as he bites a bruise no one can miss into his shoulder.

He says, "You don't have to pretend to bring shit over. I'll fuck you anyway."

David opens his mouth to say, _I'm not pretending_ , but closes it again, because he is.

He always is, and even when he isn't he can't be sure.

Afterwards Iker watches him inspecting the bruise, hips cocked and eyes dark, satisfied.

"Caveman," says David.

"Portugal," says Iker.

David blinks and turns to look at him. "What?"

"Portugal, the Atlantic, America."

"Fuckin' hell, Iker-- "

"Nine thousand kilometres, give or take."

"I know, it's fucking far. I have to, though."

"I know." Iker rolls his eyes. "You don't know how to do anything else."

David doesn't answer, looking down at his hands like he doesn't know what to do with them.

"Did you ever think that maybe you should learn?" says Iker.

"Sure," says David. "Just not yet. If I can't-- "

"Then you'll smile and everything will be fine anyway, because you're David fucking Beckham and it always is." Iker stretches out and kicks him, then leaves the room.

It's funny, thinks David, how Iker makes him frown more than he does smile, and yet.

 

In November, between games, Iker drove them to a rest stop off the highway outside Madrid.

They made out sharp and messy in the passenger seat of his car, and then David scrambled out to take pictures on his phone, because he was pretentious like that.

Iker looked at them after: one of Iker's hand on the railing, one of their feet in a brittle sea of autumn leaves, one of the sky before it started to rain, Iker's shadow in the corner.

David kissed him before they headed back and said, "Thank you."

He didn't say why, and Iker spent a pathetic amount of time wondering what he meant.

_(For bringing me here. For letting me kiss you. For making this all worth something)._

 

David spends his last night in Madrid in Iker's bed. Victoria and the kids are gone already, flown out ahead to start putting their precise, pretty, childish touches on their Hollywood mansion.

Iker fucks him slow until he begs and then messes him up, leaves bruises and bite marks everywhere he can reach. He keeps David's wrists pinned to the mattress until he needs to go harder, and then lets go to find purchase on David's hips. David writhes and twists and pushes back but doesn't actually try to get away; when his wrists are free he fists Iker's hair and leaves scratches all down his back, the tops of his arms. They don't clean up after.

David falls asleep curled into himself, facing away from Iker. There's all the usual tough guy edges to him: the definition, the three-day beard, the tattoos. He looks exactly like he's just been fucked, too. There are hickeys staining his throat and the skin between his thighs is slick with lube and semen. His own jizz is drying flakily on his chest. 

There is also this: the damp hair stuck to his temples, the starry spread of his fingers next to his cheek on the mattress, the curve of his elbow across his body. It makes Iker think of a child.

A child's smile, a child's nakedness, a child just asking to be adored. To be loved.

Iker touches the darkest purple mark on David's neck and thinks:

_They found me at the footie pitch. First place they looked._


End file.
